CHAMPIONING CREATIVITY SINCE 2007

The best kind of photography transports you completely to another time or place, and Marion Berrin’s images make me certain that I can feel the sun prickling my skin as I’m drying like I’m sunning myself next to a tropical river that I’ve just clambered out of.

Why it’s a tropical river I don’t know, as this very talented photographer is in fact based in Paris where the climate isn’t that much nicer than it is here in London, but I’m happy to embrace the overriding mood and go with it. Lifted and inspired by her mastery of the form, we chatted to Marion about her work, her (very busy) studio and how she makes it through a long drab winter without all of her ideas shrivelling up and dying in the cold and the grey. Here she is!

Marion Berrin: Photography

Where do you work?

I work in a big studio that I share with 10 people. From graphic designer to interior architects and creative managers to photographers and visual contemporary artists, there are always people coming in, new ideas in the air, good advice that someone will share on a peculiar case. There are good vibes in this studio!

It is located in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris which is a big mix of everything and anything. Luckily, friends are all working nearby and it’s quite central when you need to go to a meeting somewhere. It was very important for me to get a place to work. I am so bad at working from home.

How does your working day start?

I usually get up early and put some good music on, and then there is entire process to get me started. A strong coffee, a real breakfast, a long shower. I do not check my emails until being at the studio. I used to do it but I really need to put boundaries between work and the rest of my life, otherwise I do feel trapped. Then I have a 20 minute metro ride, and only at that moment can I put myself in a “work mode.”

How do you work and how has that changed?

I work as a contemporary art consultant right now, so I have less time for photography in my everyday life, which is a good thing. At one point I had the impression that photography was eating me. Everywhere, everything was a reason to take a picture. Now I just think more and shoot less and less. I produce less in quantity, but I do believe in a better quality.

Also, I have never felt inspired in Paris in the winter, so this gives me time to think, find inspiration, read, be curious, go see exhibitions, and then to one day be able to produce what I want!

Further reading:

Posted by
Maisie Skidmore

Assistant Editor Maisie joined It’s Nice That fresh out of university in the summer of 2013 and has stayed with us ever since. She has a particular interest in art, fashion and photography and is a regular on our Studio Audience podcast.

This week’s most viewed articles

Hot Chip are one of those bands that have always had a fantastic visual sensibility. Illustrator Wallzo has been at the helm of it, bringing us glorious Michael Craig Martin-esque block colours and shapes to decapitated statues. Now, the band is moving into the world of bespoke printing, with the artwork for new album Why Make Sense by Nick Relph using an algorithm that means each copy’s design will be unique.

Yener Torun is a 32 year-old architect who has turned Istanbul into the geographical equivalent of Aladdin’s cave of wonders. Tucked away among the beautiful Ottoman and Byzantine architecture and the blue Bosphorus are a wealth of impossibly bright buildings dominated by geometric patterns, rainbow hues and funny architectural idiosyncrasies. And through his Instagram account, Yener has been slowly but steadily documenting it all.

He may not grace the covers of magazines or the red carpet, but designer Simon Whybray is more famous than you think. When you’re lurking about on the internet and being entertained by seriously cool and interesting stuff – do you ever stop and think, who the hell made this? Well, occasionally, it’s Simon. Designer by day, Tumblr scroller by night, Simon spends most of his time tucked up in his bedroom overlooking Old Street on his laptop. Sound lazy? It isn’t. He’s busy creating products, GIFs, designs, logos, club nights, clothing, memes, typefaces, music…you name it. Being on the internet all day has fed Simon’s brain like a drip, and subsequently he’s now asked by big brands to come in and teach them what the hell is going on out there in the real – well, online – world.

It’s not often I get to write about my two great loves in a single article, but sometimes the stars align and I’m covering smoked fish and graphic design all in the space of 300 words. Today I feel blessed! This strange combination of subjects has come together thanks to Swedish agency Kurppa Hosk undertaking a wholesale rebrand for Falkenbergs Lax, a small, family-owned smoked salmon specialist. Charged with turning the small-scale brand into an international major player in the fish industry, Kurrppa Hosk renamed it Korshags, and have came up with a sleek new visual identity to accompany the new name.

While magazine redesigns often receive a great deal of attention, few are likely to be more scrutinised than the new-look New York Times Magazine which debuts on Sunday. The Times is the leading newspaper in the US and its magazine is read by nearly four million people every week. When listed, the changes design director Gail Bichler and her new art director Matt Willey have implemented sound exhaustive – redrawn fonts, a redrawn logo, a new approach to lay-outs, a new-look version of the online magazine. Add to this a raft of new features and editorial changes (such as a new weekly poem, a column that rotates between four critics and a dispatch from the frontline of internet culture) and you’d be forgiven for thinking that the new magazine will be unrecognisable.

Most recent articles

Exciting new student alert! Meet Pauline, currently working on her advanced degree in type design at École Estienne in Paris – how glamorous does that sound? It’s rare to find a student with as much consistently fantastic work on their site, and for a while I didn’t actually twig that Pauline was still studying. She’s designed typefaces, had a bash at letter pressing for her business cards, and made some publications that, if I’m honest, I’d actually buy. The way she represented a bunch of Stéphane Monnot short stories is well-designed without overshadowing the writing, and that publication about the concept of an ornament just looks fantastic. Remember this name: Pauline Le Pape, she’s got big things ahead of her.

How best to describe the enduring and ubiquitous influence of COS? The brand has become almost cult-like in its appeal since it was founded a mere eight years ago, creating designs which are somehow timeless and classic and simultaneously innovative.

“I’ve been thinking about this forever and want a woman’s touch”…"In shape, 29 y/o, six feet tall"…"I know it sounds crazy but it’s a fantasy of mine for a woman to"… These are the most SFW snippets we can publish from a rather nuts, very rude new project by Cartelle Interactive, the people that brought us the brilliant, trippy J Dilla Donuts tribute, Dilla Dimension.

In the two years since we first featured nomadic designer Gabriela Maskrey she’s taken on a lot of new projects and pushed her skills in all sorts of new directions. Originally she was all about editorial design – which it has to be said, she was great at – but she’s recently branched out into branding for Peruvian luxury food company La Pulperia. Her bold serif rendering of the company name coupled with historic imagery referencing Peru’s gastronomic culture combines to satisfying effect, and the addition of hand-drawn icons is a great touch too. All in all a great first foray away from the world of books and magazines.

When you hear the words “branded content” you probably don’t get that excited, right? Well, times are changing. No longer do brands want to settle for something that isn’t going to whet the imagination of an audience, and so they’re recruiting fantastic creatives and partnering with cool platforms to make it actually worth everyone’s time. With this in mind, check out this pretty breathtaking animation created by Google Play in collaboration with Creative Sunday.

When an insurance company challenges you to not skip through their latest ad on YouTube, your first reaction is likely to be “try me.” But you know what? They have actually pulled something pretty remarkable together for their latest advert. Well, I say remarkable, it’s pretty low-budget, but the idea behind it is great. Knowing that the majority of people wouldn’t watch an insurance ad on YouTube unless you were holding a gun to their head, they made their advert two seconds long. Then if like me you enjoy the first two seconds, you can stay for the whole thing. Best thing about this ad is how they didn’t even green screen the family, and you can see them wigging out and twitching as that dog goes all Beethoven on their dinner. Nice.

Discussing the “treacherous tide” of the “constantly surging ocean” of the web last year, we looked at the brilliant UK redesign of Wired, a project that wowed pretty much everyone. Now, the US Wired site has also upped its game in its first redesign since 2007, aiming to “create a clean and gratifying experience” through a clutter-free site. We had a chat with editor in chief Scott Dadich about designing a site for some very, very digital-savvy readers.

Toronto-based illustrator and cartoonist Jenn Liv is a whizz with colour. With sustained attention to detail, she illustrates often quite stereotypical moments but always with a twist. There’s a great battle between two knights on a cliff edge at sunset, just giving up; a romantic moment, flowers, a white dress, a gust of wind and the man just nonchalantly wandering off.

I think I might never have seen two illustrators as well paired as Faye Coral Johnson and Mike Redmond, the duo behind this charming new book Behind the Wild Heart. Faye’s work – sketchy, sweet and imperfect – seems to slot right in with Mike’s dynamic cartoony characters, and the two work together so often that it’s difficult to tell where one’s work ends and the other’s begins.

Often the most interesting branding work hinges on a simple twist, and such is the case in this work by Freytag Anderson for Fraher architects. The Scottish studio’s concept revolves around the neat idea of the “F” in the logo doubling up as an architectural floorpan.

“Las Vegas is the strip club capital of the world,” says Stefanie Moshammer, an Austrian photographer whose recent project led her to the underbelly of Nevada’s shimmering city. Stefanie began work on a series called Vegas and She, in which she documents strippers, nightclubs, and various bits and bobs that represent Las Vegas culture: bright pink limos, dust trails, palm trees, and diving boards into sapphire pools.

Editors' Picks

Hattie Stewart never stops giggling. It’s infectious, she’s a hoot. Her current solo show at London’s KK Outlet is under way, with a whole bunch of her now notorious, collectible doodles on magazine covers and, more recently, leather jackets. A Kingston graduate, Hattie now works for the likes of Rookie, House of Holland, Pepsi, and whoever else wants a big old dose of colour and weird magic injected into their brand. Her working style is instantly recognisable, and you’d be right in thinking that the nature of her work ties in to what she wears day-to-day.

Last week an interesting Twitter debate sprang up after a comment by graphic designer Andy Pressman who admitted that on a recent series he worked on it wasn’t always possible to read the books before designing the covers. So we decided to speak to a few other book cover designers and find out where they stand on this apparently quite divisive design issue; as ever you can add your thoughts using the comment thread below…

Life can be pretty boring when you’re a teenager. Rather than turning to the gory allure of video games and SnapChat, 18-year-old Izumi Miyazaki decided to take matters into her own hands and make a series of selfies that make yours look absolutely rubbish. By utilising household items and foodstuffs as props, and sometimes going as far as building her own sets (see head in the clouds photos below) Izumi transports herself into far off lands, so far off that they’re on a different world entirely. Her fixed, deadpan stare throughout makes the project not just endearing but also worth much more than if she was just larking about. It’s art, man. FYI she also sells badges and other small merch items – get ’em while you can.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve eaten sans serif, I’ve made huge typographic swear words with an ex, I’ve wandered Dalston taking pictures of kebab shop exteriors and I’ve seen Bodoni predict my fortune. Hell, I’ve even tried typographic dating. Why? Because of Sarah Hyndman, the one woman tour-de-force behind the Type Tasting enterprise, which takes a fun approach to typography and how it affects us emotionally.

Brooklyn-based graphic designer Elana Schlenker is not only the creator of “occasional pamphlet of typographic smut” Gratuituous Type, she’s also a freelancer with a magnificent array of colourful projects on her (frankly quite beautiful) website, a very good speaker, an exhibitor at exhibitions in Edinburgh and at London’s own KK Outlet. And she’s won a bunch of awards, too. Her aesthetic is pastel coloured without being sickly, innovative without feeling audacious and involves the kinds of books which just seem to make life nicer.

For this week’s Introducing feature we interviewed the owner of this lovely workspace, illustrator Matthew Daniel Swan. New both to London and to creating illustration on commission, we had a chat with Matthew and picked up a couple of gems along the way. Among them, he told us about the impact his desk has on the work he makes on it, the trouble with lava caves, and drawing wizards when he gets stuck. Read on to find out more about Matthew’s work!

São Paulo-based graphic designer Rodrigo Sommer specialises in print and identity design, with a particular flair for adding mixed media approaches to posters, book covers and album artwork. Intrigued by the Brazilian design scene, and by Rodrigo’s willingness to incorporate hand-drawn and collage elements into digitally-dominated spheres, we caught up with the designer to find out how he approaches a new project, and why procrastinating isn’t always a bad thing.

Martina Corà is a Milan-based photographer whose brilliant, concept-led photographic projects set her far apart from the crowd. We were utterly taken in by her semi-animated GIFs and her eye for a sweet shot, so we caught up with her to find out how she goes about her working day. Read on to find out about the angst she gets when she’s away from the internet for too long, how to assist a food stylist and how interning for herself would make taking selfies that much easier!

It’s one thing for an illustrator to create a recognisable style that underpins all of their work, but it’s another entirely for them to succeed in moulding that style to suit a whole realm of needs. Freelance illustrator Scott Smith does this effortlessly though, fashioning shadowy, half-concealed hidey-holes in the jungle as aptly as he does geometric cityscapes and comfy-looking domestic interiors. We had a chat with the London-based creative about how his working day pans out…

Full to the brim with sunshine, bright colours and the visual equivalent of joy in every shape, curve and line, Elyn Kazarian’s design and illustration work screams of being created on in some warm, joyful place. Probably because she lives in sunny L.A.. Art director of a music venue, she works primarily designing posters and album artwork, with a few personal projects and freelance gigs thrown in for good measure. We caught up with her to find out how her typical day sounds.

Today’s Introducing is a tribute to the hand-letterers of the world, who are all too often tucked quietly away behind fancy designers and impressive identities. Oli Frape is a London-based typographer and illustrator who creates all of his typefaces by hand, who kindly had a chat with us to tell us about his working day. He also posts all of his developing work on his blog, which is a great insight into the process. Read on to find out more!

Dividing his time between Oregon and Norway, illustrator Max Estes must have no shortage of influences contributing to his vibrant work. His style is pronounced and individual – characters are contained by their thick black outlines and ping-pong ball-round heads – allowing his images to appeal seamlessly to both adults and children.

Neo Neo is a visual communications and graphic design studio directed by Thuy-An Hoang and Xavier Erni, based in Geneva. Their work ranges from art direction and book design to websites, signage and custom typefaces, with projects for galleries and museums in Geneva, New York and France under their belts. Not knowing much about the Swiss design scene, we caught up with Xavier and Thuy-An to find out more about what they do!

The best kind of photography transports you completely to another time or place, and Marion Berrin’s images make me certain that I can feel the sun prickling my skin as I’m drying like I’m sunning myself next to a tropical river that I’ve just clambered out of.

Querida is Spanish for “beloved”, and it’s with the same adoration that this Spanish studio named themselves, as they treat their creative projects.“We love typography, illustration, colours, photography and we enjoy new technologies as much as we worship detail and craft.” Their love for what they do makes itself apparent in their work; from art direction and design for Perdiz magazine to an identity and corresponding stationery for Idep , Barcelona’s design school.